


gatekeeper

by irnan



Series: women of consequence [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:23:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah Abbott's not convinced she makes a very good guardian, but she is sure she knows how to welcome people, and that's just as (more than) important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gatekeeper

one.  
  
Mum's funeral sucks so much out of you that, in later years, you don't really remember the rest of that year. You stayed home; you read books; you avoided your family and spent a lot of time watching the walls of your bedroom, as if your gaze alone could melt them. That sort of thing. Susan and Ernie and all the others wrote, but you wrote an answer to maybe one letter a month, and never sentit. Everytime Dad - or Aunt Kate, or any of your cousins - said, come on Hannah, come out with me, you stared at them as if they'd grown a second head.

Megan came to see you in the holidays and said, hesitantly, _better place_. You threw a glass at the wall and yelled at her to _get the fuck out_.

She shrunk back, twisting the cross at her throat. "You don't believe in anything anymore, do you?"

"And I never fucking will again if it involves talking shite like that! GET OUT!"

 

two.  
  
Seventh year crystallises, hard, becomes fixed in amber and perfectly preserved. _Mudblood filth_ and your shaking hands as the Cruciatus curse was lifted, how you threw up afterwards in the shadowy corridor and wept. Ginny Weasley helped you back to the Hufflepuff common room, more beaten up than you were even then, barely a month in.

"You're killing yourself," you remember telling her. Her face darkened under the bruises.

"They're killing us," she said. "They're killing all of us."

You remember how the words came out of your mouth without your conscious volition, without a second's thought. "We have to fight. We have to fight back, like in fifth year."

Ginny grinned, but it stretched her split lip and made her wince. "That's what I've been saying."

You stuck out a hand to her. "Hufflepuff for Dumbledore's Army."

"Gryffindor for the DA and Harry," she said, taking it.

"And Hermione and Ron, wherever they are."

"For all of us."

"Yes."

 

three.  
  
You fight; you all fight.

Against all expectations and beyond all hope, you even win.

  
  
four.  
  
Things are quiet for a long while after that. Your Dad lost a leg in the battle and all his peace of mind; looking back on it you don't understand how a seventeen-year-old came out of it steadier and stronger than before while her father collapsed. It takes him a long time to come to terms with everything, and at first it's all you can do to look after him. The mortgage on the house piles up, and the bills pile up, all in a currency you and your parents have only ever been half-used to, and you can't go to Aunt Kate, no matter how close she lives, you can't stand being _questioned_ , why Hannah why you could have come home why do this to yourself, especially after poor Leah died, you and Max are being foolish Hannah, and you avoid this litany successfully but the hours you spend with at St Mungos are pointlessly tedious and awful, and you both know it. You're not the only ones who practically live there these days, but none of you are interested in each other; your own pain is pretty all-consuming right now. Other people can take theirs and jump off a cliff with it.

You make a point of not going to Mum's grave.

Anyway, taking the night shifts at the Leaky helps you so much (with the mortgage, with the bills, with everything) you cry when you get the job, though thankfully not in front of Tom: in the street round the corner. Just when you're coming out of a decently long and relieved cry in a deserted London back street, someone flings an arm around you and hands you a handkerchief.

You jump like a scared rabbit and your hand flashes to your wand.

"Hey, I'm sorry," says Neville's voice. "It's just us, Hannah."

" _Oh!_ You wankers."

"Sorry," says Harry; he's standing in front of you and it's Neville's arm around your shoulders. They're both wearing Auror uniforms, regulation black with the seal worked in gold on their jackets, over their hearts. "You all right, can we get you a drink?"

You sniff and blow your nose and shake your head and laugh, wetly. "No, thanks... but if you come in tomorrow at nine I can get you one."

Neville hugs you. "Hey, that's great!"

You nod, eyes wet. Harry's green eyes flick over you from head to toe; it's a bit like being dissected, weighed, assessed. He nods at you. "Come on - someplace else. Tea? Cake?"

"I -"

You don't want their bloody charity, or their pity, or even, really, their compassion, or at least you wouldn't have this morning, fresh off a half-sleepless night with Dad's nightmares in the room next door and the knowledge that bread and cereal's all you've really got to eat in the house.

"You look a bit done in, Hannah," says Neville gently. "Come on, we didn't do all that to end up ignoring each other after it was over."

Just one cup. All right, a pot. Two pots. And two cakes. And shepherd's pie to follow. Eventually Harry has to go; he leaves you with a faint grin and pays the bill on the way out; you and Neville talk for another two hours. The proprietor has to shove you out of the door at closing time.

The next day at nine, the Leaky's heaving with members of the DA. Susan flings her arms around you, why-haven't-you-called. Neville's a bit red and awkward when he orders a drink. You catch Harry's eye, and he winks at you.

  
  
five.  
  
You go to Mum's grave again; the grass is neat, the flowers fresh, the sky above as grey as her headstone. Leah Abbott, beloved mother and wife... Leah Abbott, respected legislator. Leah Abbott, well-known campaigner. Leah Abbott, murder victim. Leah Abbott, blood traitor.

Leah Abbott, victor.  
  


  
six.  
  
You sit on walls with Susan and swing your feet like children, like carefree adolescents though you're anything but. Susan strokes her hair out of her face, away from her scars, flaunting them like Ginny does; you're the only ones left now. Six Hufflepuff lasses down to two in the space of a single night. 

Like green bottles, hanging on the wall. Susan laughs when you say that but of course you're both well on the way to drunk at the time. There was nothing funny about the way Dolohov had blasted poor Jenny's face away. They identified her body by the ring she wore and the wand in her hand.

"Decimated," says Susan. "Like our parents. Two generations, as near to wiped out as makes no difference."

"Well," you say. "Don't look at _me_ to repopulate the wizarding race."

Susan laughs again; it's twilight in a pretty Muggle suburb, and the sound runs echoing down the street in the warm summer air.

"We'll manage. I am," suddenly serious, "going to take the Gringotts job."

"Hmm. Why?"

Susan grins. "Hermione needs a liasion," she says.

You think about this for a minute. "They're sort of taking over the world, aren't they?"

Somewhere an owl is hooting in a tree, and children are laughing, and the stars are coming out above you, and the world, balanced in a heartbeat, is nothing if not beautiful.

"I thought that was the idea," says Susan at last. "I mean, in a good way, not a Voldemort way, I thought the idea was that we could do it better. That we were supposed to be doing it better. I mean, we _have_ to do it better, or he might as well have won."

"I'm glad we went," you blurt out.

She blinks.

"To the DA," you explain. "I'm glad we didn't listen to Megan."

"Oh. So am I. Poor Meg. I always felt like she didn't know herself what she believed in. I don't mean God - she believed in him. I mean all the rest, you know. The DA or not the DA. Turning your cheek and whatnot."

You scuff your heel against the wall. "I suppose she found out in the end," more sorrowfully than the words themselves suggest.

Susan sighs. "Or she wouldn't be dead."

But that's too easy an equation, a fact you're both aware of; still, higher Arithmancy is best left to Ravenclaws and Hermione Granger. Your own math is simpler, centering on a promise and a hope.

  
  
seven.  
  
You stand upon a knife-edge boundary between two worlds. Yours is the first face Muggle-born children see who come to Diagon Alley for the first time. Yours is the responsibility to welcome them, to wave them through, to take their hands and smile. Yours is the right to shut others out, to close your doors against them. You stand on a threshold and watch others pass beneath the gates, all smiles and wonder, the way it should be, the way it was before, the way it will stay, now, for as long as you can keep it together, by hard work and loyalty and kindness.

Neville laughs at you for saying things like that. You suppose you can't blame him; after all, he's stuck teaching the people who pass you by.


End file.
